Work Motivational Challenges Regarding the Interface Between Agile Teams and a Non-Agile Surrounding Organization: A case study
It addresses motivational issues for agile teams in traditional organizational settings, but is incremental as it builds on existing studies of agile-non-agile interfaces.
This case study investigated work motivational challenges when agile teams operate within a non-agile organization at a Swedish car manufacturer, finding that teams felt unappreciated due to unsynchronized feedback and frustrated when transitioning to non-agile work.
There are studies showing what happens if agile teams are introduced into a non-agile organization, e.g. higher overhead costs and the necessity of an understanding of agile methods even outside the teams. This case study shows an example of work motivational aspects that might surface when an agile team exists in the middle of a more traditional structure. This case study was conducted at a car manufacturer in Sweden, consisting of an unstructured interview with the Scrum Master and a semi-structured focus group. The results show that the teams felt that the feedback from the surrounding organization was unsynchronized resulting in them not feeling appreciated when delivering their work. Moreover, they felt frustrated when working on non-agile teams after have been working on agile ones. This study concludes that there were work motivational affects of fitting an agile team into a non-agile surrounding organization, and therefore this might also be true for other organizations.